Legislation seeking to streamline the permitting process for water supply and flood risk reduction projects passed the California Senate Natural Resources Committee, it’s first hearing in the State Legislature. CSDA joined a broad-based coalition of stakeholders supporting SB 23 (Caballero) to help ensure California's water infrastructure is modernized and made more resilient to the impacts of climate change.
An excerpt from the coalition letter states, “SB 23 would help address these issues by identifying opportunities to improve and streamline the regulatory permitting process, without shortcutting environmental reviews, so these critical infrastructure projects are built at the pace and scale needed to prepare for climate change. SB 23 would address inefficiencies in the application review process and ensure project proponents and state agencies are meeting reasonable deadlines and moving applications forward in an expeditious manner.”
The bill would utilize permit streamlining tools already available in existing law that are proven to reduce duplicative planning efforts while still meeting rigorous environmental standards. Moreover, the bill would help address state agency resource and staffing issues by allowing project applicants to cover the costs of expediting the environmental review process.
SB 23 is sponsored by the Association of California Water Agencies. A copy of the complete coalition letter can be found here. This measure will now head to the Senate Environmental Quality Committee for further review. If you have any projects that would be helped by this legislation, or any feedback you would like to share, please reach out to CSDA Legislative Representative, Heidi Hannaman, at heidih@csda.net.
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